


silver beams

by asperityblue



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, I would tag this Hurt/Comfort but there's a lot of hurt and very little comfort, M/M, as usual, don't worry nobody dies in this, mostly because they're already dead, my fics just keep getting shorter, the major character death tag is my closest friend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-14
Updated: 2014-10-14
Packaged: 2018-02-21 04:03:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2454035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asperityblue/pseuds/asperityblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson was a good man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	silver beams

His knuckles are white where they clench around the edge of the coffin. The footsteps are sparse and wade around him, no one daring to come close. A lone figure intrudes on his bubble of hostility to stand next to him. He's learnt in the past hour that anyone will go away if ignored for approximately 76 seconds, so he waits. For fifteen minutes he stands, blank-faced and vaguely annoyed.

He only turns his head when a pale hand comes to rest over his tense fingers. It hurts to look at her, to see that snub nose he'd come to adore, those tired blue eyes, all incredibly, heart-wrenchingly wrong on a face so thin and feminine and melancholy. He'd only seen her once before, years ago, briefly, hidden among swarms of acquaintances at her baby brother's wedding. Their wedding. 

He murmurs, "Harry," and goes back to staring unseeingly at pristine cloth.

He knows the exact moment she starts crying, can hear the muffled, near-silent sobs, weeping and sniffling like most the people at this whitewashed prison of a funeral. He's so sick of it, sick of all these people and all these bloody tears. They make him want to scream, collapse, dissolve. His eyes stay dry.

He's expecting "I'm sorry" or "I miss him" or "He loved you" or "You never deserved him" or something equally meaningless.

Instead, she whispers, "He saved me too."

Loss and lack. Alcohol and cocaine, a pair of addicts, a pair of crumpled paper marionettes brought back to life by the man behind the glass beneath their shaking fingertips.

He squeezes his eyes shut and nods, stiffly. When she curls fingers around his to stop the trembling, he turns his hand over and grips back just as hard.


End file.
